


Socks n Oranges

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Christmas fic, M/M, Natasha santa, kissing!, oranges!, socks!, weapons grade fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 15:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2512739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not even the Winter Soldier would shank Santa Claus.<br/>(CHRISTMAS FLUFF ALERT)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Socks n Oranges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zarhooie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarhooie/gifts).



> For Zarhooie, who had all the good ideas.
> 
> PS: If you're looking for a great Christmas Stucky playlist, you could do worse than checking out [Voodooling's lovely mix!](http://8tracks.com/voodooling/stevie-santa-baby-a-christmas-stucky-mix)

There’s paperwork. There’s so much paperwork. He’s been filling out forms all morning, and his hand’s got a cramp. Most of the forms are basically the same, he doesn’t see why he should have to keep writing the same stuff over and over again. He should get a stamp for his full name.

It doesn’t help that he’s… he’s… he tries not to think of it how he naturally thinks of it. He’s not being shipped or transferred or reassigned. He’s moving. It doesn’t help that he’s moving and everything he owns which isn’t much is in a sports bag at his feet and the little, windowless room where he spent the last year is anonymous now. The way it was when Steve brought him here. When he was… and, no, he tries not to think about that either.

“James?” Mandeep, one of the orderlies gives him an encouraging smile. “Remember to breathe.”

“Yeah,” he says. But she’s right, he’s been holding his breath. He focuses on that a bit, and wipes the sweat where it’s collected on his mouth and turns over the final form.

“You’ll come visit us sometimes, right?” Mandeep asks.

He glances up at her. “No,” he says.

She frowns. “We’ll miss you.”

He smiles. “No you won’t. But thanks.”

Her frown deepens a little bit, but anything she was going to say is stopped because there’s the whine of the security gate opening, and then Steve is coming through the door. He’s a little pink in the cheeks and his hair’s a bit wet. Maybe it’s raining. Maybe…

“Fall asleep in the shower, Rogers?” Bucky asks. Steve grins at him. The pure pleasure in that look is enough to ease the terror that’s wrapped like a band around Bucky’s chest.

“Ready?” Steve asks.

Bucky flaps the paperwork at him. “Procedures,” he says. He hasn’t been a free man since 1945. There’s paperwork that needs doing. There are cards he needs to get by in the modern world, and Uncle Sam wants to pay him all his back pay and then take off some taxes and tell him he can retire and… Steve’s hand settles on his shoulder. Bucky hadn’t realized he’d been talking, or that his hand had been shaking. Now he’s made a mess of the god damned form.

“Bring it with you,” Steve says softly.

And this is it. It’s real hard to breathe in here today. Bucky folds the forms in half and stuffs them into his bag. “Maybe I will come visit,” he says to Mandeep and she grins at him.

“Take care, James,” she says. She says something else too but he doesn’t really notice. He’s breathing, careful about the breathing, and Steve’s right there and if he needed to, he could probably come back. They would probably take him back. He’s an asset. He looks at Steve and Steve smiles at him.

“Ready?” he asks.

No. “Yeah.”

 

*

 

He notices the hanging decorations in the same way he notices people wearing heavy coats. The static of normal human life. It’s winter. It happened somehow while he was being kept in the secure parts of SHIELD. Now they’re in the public areas, and he can see the grey sky mirroring the grey city below.

“Oh,” Steve says suddenly. He passes a coat over. It’s a light thing, but neither he nor Steve need much in the way of weather protection, though the Russians had once dressed him in a huge coat of heavy wool and lined at the collar and the cuffs with fur and, until the blood had gotten the fur wet, it had been luscious to be so warm in the bone-aching cold.

Bucky takes the light coat and pulls it on. It smells like Steve. That startles him. It smells like his sweat and his deodorant and the stuff he puts in his hair when it gets too long. He pulls it closed around him and nods at Steve and lets Steve lead him out through the big glass doors and there’s no gunfire and there’s no one chasing them, but his heart is beating hard anyway.

The city smells of wet concrete. There’s the stink of exhaling sewers, of exhaust fumes. There’s the crisp sweetness of the snow that’s falling down on to both of them. He didn’t realize he’d stopped, there on the steps. Snow like feathers. Green wreaths and glowing white lights hanging from the lamp posts. Steve, smiling at him. He shakes his head.

“It’s Christmas,” he whispers.

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

He can’t remember the last time he saw Christmas decorations. Maybe 1944. He rarely worked in deep winter, and after the Odessa debacle, they never send him out during holidays. The sensory-memory triggers were always too strong to completely erase. He shakes his head.

“I…”

Steve’s smile fades, replaced by a look of concern.

“I’d forgot," Bucky says.

“Well, you’ve been busy.”

“No, about… about Christmas. I can’t…” but it’s coming back. His mother’s pineapple-and-yam casserole, dotted with marshmallows. The scent of spices in wine. Cold and broke but making the best of it, him and Steve. What was it they gave one another that last Christmas? “Socks,” he says when the memory comes back. “Socks.”

Steve looks confused for a second, then he laughs. “Yeah.”

“And a god damned orange.”

Steve laughs again.

“How the hell did you manage to get the orange?”

Steve looks shifty. “Some things are better left a mystery.”

“You stole it.” Bucky accuses. “That choir boy face of yours, nobody would have looked twice at you.”

“I may have used my powers for evil in the past,” Steve says gravely, “but I’m a reformed character.”

Bucky snorts.

“C’mon,” Steve says, leading the way down to the slush-covered sidewalk. “We’ve go a ways to go.”

Bucky follows. He stares around him as they go. He can’t help himself. Decorations have really changed. Not the basics, there’s still no shortage of plastic plant parts and fake red berries, but the shimmering, cascading lights are a real step up from the lights that he and Steve went down to Smith’s Hardware to see, the ones with coloured liquid that bubbled.

“What do you want?” Steve asks, glancing at him. “For Christmas?”

Bucky shakes his head. There’s nothing. He’s free, and Steve is here, and he has everything. There’s nothing he wants that anyone could ever give him. And anyway. “C’mon Stevie, I haven’t got any money to get you anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. Come on, give. What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ve got about ten minutes because the shops are gonna close soon. C’mon Buck.” Steve looks sort of weirdly hopeful. “Anything.”

Bucky thinks hard. “If I’m gonna be working I need a new TAC suit.”

Steve’s smile fades. “I think Stark’s got you covered.”

Bucky shrugs. “You asked.”

Steve’s eyes narrow.

“What?” Bucky says. Steve doesn’t answer. “No, Steve, no. I know that look.”

“Just… hang on just a second, okay? I just. Like five minutes.” He hesitates then. “I-is that okay?”

“You mean am I going to run back to SHIELD with my tail between my legs?”

“No.”

“Yes you do, and I’m tempted. But I’ll wait.”

Steve nods. He turns and sprints back the way they came and leaves Bucky standing there, looking in shop windows at all the cornucopia of things for sale. He’s still boggling over the window displays, the cascades of delicately painted chocolates, the complex scenes made of toys (there’s a sign in the toyshop window that says _YES! We have Furbys_ and he has no idea what that means). He pulls the hood of Steve’s jacket up and breathes in the scent. It’s better even than the warmth.

Soon Steve comes running back, slipping a little on the slush, a grey bag under his arm like a football. He’s grinning.

“Whatever it is, tell me you didn’t steal it.”

“Didn’t,” Steve says. “Ready?”

“Sure. What the hell’s a furby?”

Steve frowns and shrugs. “Sounds like a kid’s toy.”

“Sounds like a stuffed ferret.”

“That squeaks.”

“But has real teeth.”

Steve glances at him. “That sounds like a terrible toy.”

Bucky laughs. The easy grin on Steve’s face, the scent on the jacket, it’s making him feel a little careless, almost drunk, and Steve looks a little dopey too. He opens his mouth. “Don’t say it,” Bucky says and Steve laughs.

“Okay. But I did.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he answers, but that too, along with the scent in the jacket and the nearness of him, that too chases away the chill.

 

*

 

Steve’s place is warm and bright, and there’s a plastic tree in the corner of the living room. There’s even a garland around the windows, and a pair of stockings hung off the brickwork that say _James_ and _Steven_ in silver letters. He laughs when he sees it but Steve stares. He points.

“Uh. Those weren’t there when I came to get you,” he says.

“The stockings?”

“The everything. I’ve been too busy to put things together,” he adds, a little sheepishly. He waggles the shopping bag as evidence. He looks back at his altered living room. “I mean. The tree. It’s even _decorated_.”

“Natalia,” Bucky says. There’s something of whiff of Red Room perfection about the scene. He glances at Steve and Steve’s frowning, arms crossed over his chest. “You don’t like it?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about being reverse-burgled.”

“It’s the season for reverse-burgling,” Bucky says. “At least it’s not some stranger coming down your chimney. Between you and me, Santa’d probably end up dead before he made it down.”

Steve rolls his eyes. God, some things never change.

“You’re just mad because somebody else has noticed you can’t look after yourself.”

“Not _can’t-_ ”

“That you _don’t_ , then,” Bucky says. He narrows his eyes at Steve. “Go on, admit it.”

“Never,” Steve says. He goes over to the tree and puts the bag under it.

 

*

 

He was supposed to sleep in the spare room, where there’s a bed made with perfect hospital corners, a big window that looks out on the street, and a little dresser for his things. Instead he falls asleep on Steve’s shoulder while they’re watching _White Christmas_. The couch is big enough that when they both wake up because the movie’s over and the credits are rolling, Steve just turns off the TV and they both slump down.

They could sleep here; it’d be low on the list of most uncomfortable places they’ve ever slept. But Bucky shivers once, the snow falling past the window waking up a cold memory in him, and Steve grunts and gets to his feet. Steve goes, a little stiff-legged, into his bedroom. Probably planning to get a blanket or something, but Bucky follows him in and the guy’s so tired he doesn’t even notice. He lets Bucky push him down on the bed and scoots over so Bucky can crawl up beside him. They lie soaking up each other’s warmth, heads close together, like it used to be.

Once, some time near dawn, he wakes with all his senses ready, as if something alerted him. But there’s no other sound and he settles again, head resting on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve twists a little closer, all tangled in the sheets, mouth open, fast asleep. Footsteps soft on the wooden floors. Bucky catches a whiff of shampoo scent. Only one person moves like that and smells like that. He relaxes. He looks down at Steve. “You need to get a guard dog or something,” he whispers. Steve sleeps on. Bucky waits till the window sighs open and taps softly closed, then he drifts off again.

When he wakes up the next time it’s because Steve’s fingers are sliding through his hair. He cracks open one eye and looks at Steve. Steve smiles a slow, dopey smile.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispers.

Bucky grunts. 

“You going to keep your hair long like this?”

“No,” Bucky says. “It’s not the 90s any more.”

Steve smiles but Bucky knows he doesn’t have the foggiest idea what he’s talking about, and it makes him grin. “You going to keep petting me?” he asks.

“Dunno,” Steve says. “Do you like it?”

Bucky could lie, but he doesn’t. Steve’s just been brave. The least he can do is return the favour. “Yeah, I do.”

Some of the pink from yesterday lights up Steve’s cheeks again. “Oh,” he says softly.

“You can… uh…”

“Oh,” Steve whispers, really going pink. Then he gets real still. “Bucky I don’t want you to think that-”

“I don’t.”

Steve licks his lips. “You know I…”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Me too. So you gonna or should I?”

“Maybe…”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers, and kisses him.

 

*

 

There are gifts, perfectly wrapped and ribboned, under the tree. The stockings are bulging with stuff. The grey bag Steve put under the tree yesterday is missing, and in its place there is a very large, very fancy red bag with tissue paper coming out of it. The tags says, _Bucky, with love, Steve_.

“But where did it come from?” Steve asks. Bucky frowns at him and rolls his eyes. “No, I mean it Buck, I didn’t hear a thing last night.”

“I did.”

“Someone was here last night? You didn’t…” Steve stops himself. The word “murder” was probably the next word in the sentence.

“Not even the Winter Soldier would shank Santa Claus,” he says. “But with friends like Natalia, you should probably get a safe deposit box for anything real personal. That’s all I’m saying.” Steve covers his face with his hands and Bucky grins, because he knows something now about Steven Grant Rogers that he wondered, really wondered about this morning. “Oh yeah?” Bucky asks.

“Stop,” Steve says.

“Nightstand or under the bed?”

“No, Bucky.”

“Vibrating or plain?”

“ _Bucky._ Why don’t you open a present something?” Steve asks, and gives him a shove.

Bucky goes to the tree. He selects the red bag that’s replaced the grey one, and he pulls aside the tissue. Inside, there’s a pair of socks. Thick, grey, wool, with a red band around the top. And an orange, a mandarin orange. Suddenly he’s hungry. He can’t wait to eat it; it’s been almost a century. He peels it and takes a bite and Steve comes to stand by him, smiling and sheepish.

“It was all I could think of,” he says.

Bucky grins, juice running down his chin. He puts a segment of orange into Steve’s mouth, and then kisses him. It's messy and it's sticky, but that's the story of their lives.


End file.
